Chapter 15. Archiving Files

The archiving files chapter provides some basic information on the simple programs that you can use to archive files. You will often see these programs used when you try to install programs without using a package management tool.

This is not a backup guide

Please note that while tar is useful for regular purposes, and possibly combined with bash sciprting or similar it can become useful, it is not a great program for performing real backups of data.

You should try searching the internet if you are looking for backup programs on GNU/Linux or try Sourceforge or Freshmeat for programs that you can use. You may also like to see rsync, Section 15.2.